In Networking Group Alpha Club, It’s All About Who You Know

When Eric Chin of Crosslink Capital and Mike Jung of Panorama Capital started the Alpha Club in 2006, there was no shortage of networking organizations around Silicon Valley bringing entrepreneurs together with fellow entrepreneurs, investors and corporate executives.

“Only about 10% of the time would you run into the right people,” said Chin, a partner at San Francisco-based Crosslink Capital, who founded Alpha with Menlo Park, Calif.-based Panorama Capital Partner Mike Jung. “We thought, ‘What if we can create a highly concentrated environment of C-level executives, Internet and software executives?”

From modest beginnings—the group first met in a restaurant in Palo Alto, Calif., that has since shut down, and financed its first 18 events from Chin’s and Jung’s own wallets—it has grown to include more than 300 members and a 12-person advisory board that plans the group’s now-monthly events. The non-profit club, which has hosted more than 65 events to date, now receives funding from Silicon Valley Bank, SoftTech VC and First Round Capital.

The monthly roundtable events, which include 12 to 15 participants, separate Alpha from most other networking organizations, Chin says. Rather than just bringing people together over drinks and appetizers, Alpha Club’s advisory board creates a theme, and then invites participants–exclusively founders and CEOs of Internet and software companies and vice presidents at the large public Internet and software companies–based on how relevant they are to the discussion.

“We work from the bottom up,” he said. “We say, ‘Here’s the theme. Now, who are the 12 or so people that need to be there?’”

Recent themes have included mobile apps and social networking monetization, at which Tim Kendall, Facebook’s former director of monetization, was the featured guest. The purpose of the themed events is to create a sort of classic salon, in which ideas are freely debated by experts.

SoftTech founder and seed investor Jeff Clavier, a longtime member of the club and an advisory board member, said the carefully-thought-out attendance list is what sets Alpha Club events apart.

“It can lead to really interesting, rewarding conversations,” he said. “It provides a level of curation that makes it valuable.”

The way to become a member of Alpha Club is to be invited to one of these events, and attend. Membership includes access to all the larger alpha events, and some future monthly roundtables. Founders and CEOs can request membership to the club here.

Chin says companies have been acquired directly as a result of an entrepreneur meeting the “right people” at an Alpha Club event. He cites an e-commerce themed event that led to a start-up entrepreneur signing business development deals with IAC and Ask.com, and getting acquired by Google Inc.

“All three of those people were in the room” at the Alpha Club event, Chin said, declining to name the company.

Venture capitalists generally aren’t a part of the club’s themed events, which are less about VCs finding deals than in providing a place for entrepreneurs to make valuable connections, Chin said.

He added that he invites a “small group of VCs” to some of the club’s larger events. Only about a dozen of the more than 300 club members are from portfolio companies of either Crosslink or Panorama, Chin said.

Events have “personally led to some fundings,” Chin said.

According to Clavier, he sees the Alpha Club mainly as a way to connect his portfolio companies with people who can help them. But the lure of meeting a great new entrepreneur in whom he can invest is never far from his mind.

“I never know where I’m going to find my next investment,” he said. “Wherever smart people get together, that’s a good place to be.”

Another longtime member, Meebo Inc. Chief Executive Seth Sternberg, finds the “entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs” aspect of the club most rewarding.

“It’s curated in such a way that folks there can actually help each other solve problems they’re working on,” he said, citing as an example companies at different stages of development discussing how to handle internal communications — the bigger company can tell the smaller one what to expect as it grows. “That’s extra helpful.”

In addition to the monthly themed events, the club holds larger events based around conferences such as TechCrunch Disrupt, AlwaysOn and the Game Developers Conference. There’s also an annual summer party, to be held this year on June 30 in San Francisco, whose purpose is simply “getting everyone together” and includes about 100 people.

Each event, Chin says, is a validation of what brought him to the Bay Area in the first place. He spent ten years in Boston, he said, before he and his wife decided to move west.

“The concentration of talent out here is phenomenal. The human capital is extraordinary. If you can facilitate that, you’ve got something.”

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